Healthy Vegan French Toast

This delicious recipe for French toast is a much healthier version of the old egg-and-butter-saturated favorite. This light vegan meal has sweet subtle nuances that will delight even the most discriminating omnivore palate.

While eggs are notorious for their high cholesterol content and butter for its high fat content, this recipe calls for no butter or margarine and contains absolutely no cholesterol and no eggs. It's a great recipe for those concerned with preventing heart disease, and can be adjusted to contain no oil.

The secret to an enjoyable and yet healthy French toast breakfast lies in choosing high quality low-fat alternatives to traditional ingredients, and using low-fat cooking methods.

You will need a standard blender and a flat, non-stick cooking pan. You'll also need a non-stick spatula and a shallow bowl.

Choose a bread made with whole grains and minimal, natural ingredients. The taste and texture of a high quality Sourdough Pugliese complements the slightly sweet banana based mix. Whichever bread you choose, a hearty, all-natural loaf with a strong, chewy texture works best and will add its own distinctive flavor to the meal.

You can make this recipe even healthier by making and using your own rice milk, as many commercial rice milks contain oil. Blend 1 part brown rice with 4 parts water and strain the liquid into a bowl with a wire mesh strainer and/or with cheesecloth. You can use the left-over brown rice mush to thicken a blended soup or stew.

• Sourdough Pugliese loaf or a quality hearty bread loaf of your choice
• 1 banana
• Rice milk
• 1/2 tsp real vanilla extract (use less or none if you are using vanilla flavored rice milk)
• Cinnamon
• Real maple syrup
• Apple juice-soaked cranberries (rather than oil-prepared)

Chop the banana into chunks and put it in the blender.

Add rice milk to fill just over the banana chunks (about 1/4" - 1/2" above).

Add the vanilla extract and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon into the blender, to cover the banana chunks.

Blend until smooth. The mixture will be a brown milky color and the consistency should be similar to a French toast egg-based mixture. If you like cinnamon or the mix seems a bit light, just add more cinnamon and blend again.

Slice the loaf of bread into 1/2" - 1" slices.

Use the shallow bowl and dunk each slice of bread into the banana mixture as you would with egg-based French toast.

Cook each side for 2-4 minutes at medium to medium-high heat. Wait until the cooking side is fully cooked prior to turning. The toast should slide easily off the pan. If it doesn't, your pan is either not hot enough or you are trying to flip the toast prematurely. Each side needs to cook for a few minutes.

Serve with real maple syrup and cranberries. Enjoy!